The Educational Forum

ISSN: 0013-1725 (Print) 1938-8098 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utef20

Mediocrity and Individuality

John Dewey

To cite this article: John Dewey (1986) Mediocrity and Individuality, The Educational Forum,
50:3, 357-362, DOI: 10.1080/00131728609335789

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131728609335789

Published online: 30 Jan 2008.

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 Mediocrity and Individuality

John Dewey
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Individualism is about the most ambiguous word in the entire list of

labels in ordinary use. It means anything from egoistically centred
conduct to distinction and uniqueness. It is possible to say that
excessive individualism is an outstanding curse of American civilization,
and that absence of individualism is our marked deficiency. When the
forme r remark is made, economic and legal conditions are in mind;
when the latter, intellectual life is in question. Individuality is a surer
word; it carries with it a connotation of uniqueness of quality, or at
least of distinctiveness. It suggests a freedom which is not legal,
comparative and external but which is intrinsic and constructive. Our
forebears who permitted the growth of legal and economic arrange-
ments at least supposed, however mistakenly, that the institutions
they favored would develop personal and moral ind ividuality. It was
reserved for our own day to combine under the name of individualism,
laudation of selfish energy in industrial accomplishment with insistence
upon uniformity and conformity in mind.
Now that we have reached the point of reverence fo r mediocrity, for
submergence of individuality in mass ideals and creeds, it is perhaps not
surprising that after boasting for a long time that we had no classes we
now boast that we have discovered a scientific way of dividing our
population into definite classes. Just as Aristotle rationalized slavery by
showing how natural it was for those superior by nature to constitute
the ends for others who were only tools, so we, while marvelling
perhaps at the callousness of the Greek philosopher, rationalize the

Originally published in TheNew Republic, December 6,1922, pp. 35-37, under the title,
"Mediocrity and Individuality."

The Educational Forum, Vol. so, No.3, Spring 1986

 THE EDUCATIONAL FORUM

inequities of our social order by appealing to innate and unalterable

psychological strata in the population. Thus Mr. George B. Cutten in
his inaugural address as president of Colgate University recently
informed us that it is now "discovered" that "only fifteen percent of the
people have sufficient intelligence to get through college." From this
"discovery" he draws the conclusion that as we have never had a real
democracy, so "the low level of the intelligence of the people will not
permit of our having one." He not only makes the undeniable
statement that we are ruled by an aristocracy in industry, commerce,
professions and government, but he terms this aristocracy as intellectual
aristocracy! The adjective seems incredible. But President Cutten
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thinks there is the same scientifc warrant for assuming that con-
spicuous success under present conditions is a sign of innate intellectual
superiority as for saying that twenty-five percent of the population are
mentally subnormal and that only fifteen percent are capable of higher
education.
Mr. Cutten begins his presidential career with a startling view of the
social stratification which is to be the ultimate outcome of an
educational classification based on intellectual classifications by means
of mental testing. We are to arrive at a caste system like that of India,
"but on a just and rational basis. " For "when the tests for vocational
guidance are completed and developed, each boy and girl in school will
be assigned to the vocation for which he is fitted." There will be no
difficulty about filling the ranks of unskilled labor and mechanical
operators, for Mr. Cutten implicitly believes the yarn that the army
tests have shown that the "average mentality" of the population is
slightly over thirteen years. Considering only the energy and unspoiled
curiosity of the average thirteen year old in comparison with the dulled
observation and blunted vigor of the average adult one might hope that
this statement were true. It would be most encouraging. But it is more
to the point to remark that, as Mr. Lippmann has so clearly shown in
these pages, the statement interpreted as Mr. Cutten means it is like
saying that perhaps sixty-five percent of the population rank below the
lowest fifty percent; it takes absolutely what is only a comparative
statement, thereby rendering it literally senseless. What makes this
performance more than a mere individual mistake is that it affords
striking evidence of the habit of ignoring specific individualities, of
thinking in terms of fixed classes, intellectual and social.
There is no need to re-traverse the ground so admirably covered by
Mr. Lippman. But why has it been so generally assumed among our
cultivated leaders that a purely classificatory formula gives informa-

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tion about individual intelligence in its individuality? To say that

Johnnie Jones who was born in 1913 has in 1922 a mental age of eight
or of ten years only means that he belongs, on the basis of his
performance of certain exercises, to a class of persons at least over a
million in number, who were born in 1912 or 1914 respectively. Why
then is it so frequently supposed that the individual mentality of John
Jones has been definitely determined? To say that one belongs in a class
which is a million or so large, with respect to which one is accelerated or
retarded by a year in comparison with another class of a million, does
not, after all, throw much light on the intrinsic capacities of a given
individual.
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The assumption seems to indicate one thing. We are irretrievably

accustomed to thinking in standardized averages. Our economic and
political environment leads us to think in terms of classes, aggregates
and submerged membership in them. In spite of all our talk about
individuality and individualism we have no habit of thinking in terms of
distinctive, much less uniquely individualized, qualities. The inference
to be drawn from the popular reception of mental testings concerns the
acquired habits of intellectual spokesmen, rather than the inherent
intellectuality of the populace. This fact is indeed significant for the
prospects of democracy. But the reason it is ominous for democracy is
radically different from that often assigned. For it reflects not upon the
innate mentality of the mass but upon the acquired intelligence of men
in high positions. It shows how their education, that given by their
surroundings as well as by their schools, has fixed in them the
disposition to judge by classification instead of by discrimination, and
by classifications which represent the average of massed numbers,
mediocrities instead of individualities.
We may be thought to ignore the interest which many testers have
shown in pupils of superior abilities. For some of the testers tell us that
one of the chief beneficial consequences of testing is that it enables us
to pick out the superior tenth, to rescue the saving remnant from the
ruck in which they are not submerged. But the seeming exception
proves the rule. The idea of classification still fatally pursues and
dominates. "Superior" is still a classificatory word. The size of the class
is reduced, say from a million to a hundred thousand. But what kind of
superiority marks a particular individual is still unrevealed to us .
The practical educational use to which testers propose that the
results of testing should be put strengthens the proposition that even
cultivated minds are dominated by the concept of quantitative
classes - so much so that the quality of individuality escapes them.

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For many of them are now telling us that the chief use of the results of
the tests is to secure a more accurate ranking or grading of pupils.
Instead of mixing up together a lot of pupils of different abilities we can
divide them into a superior, a middle and an inferior section, so that
each can go its own gait without being kept back or unduly forced by
others. An individual is not conceived as an individual with his own
distinctive perplexities, methods and rates of operation. The classifi-
catory submergence of individuals in averaged aggregates is perpet-
uated; it is standardized and rendered more efficient. It may turn out
that the net result will be to postpone the day of a reform of education
which will get us away from inferior, mean and superior mediocrities
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so as to deal with individualized mind and character. The movement is

on a par with the movements to make instruction more efficient while
retaining that notion of teaching which emphasizes the receptively
docile mind instead of an inquiring and pioneering purpose.
These remarks are in no sense a hostile criticism of the scientific
procedure of mental testing. They are an attempt to suggest its proper
goal and to indicate the stage which has now been reached in moving
toward that goal. The goal is a method of discrimination, of analysis of
human beings, of diagnosis of persons, which is intrinsic and absolute,
not comparative and common. Before this goal can be reached it is
necessary that certain average statistical norms should be determined.
But their function is scientific, not practical either for schooling or for
the conduct of democracy. They are of value in working out a system of
tests to be used ultimately in analysis of an individual. You cannot be
sure, for example, that you have a good test for mechanical ingenuity in
a particular person until you have seen how large numbers react to
different exercises. The pity is that a scheme for testing tests which are
ultimately to be employed in diagnosing individuality has been treated
as if it already provided means of testing individuals.
Life insurance is impossible, for example, without extensive statis-
tical investigation, establishing quantitative mean norms. Individuals
are graded as to their degree of insurable risk on the basis of these
norms. But no one supposes that the result determines the fate of any
particular person. If to be accepted as a good risk were a guarantee of
long life, clearly no one after being accepted would insure himself. And
similarly to a sensible person rejection is not a fatalistic sign of sure
death. It is a warning to have a thorough individual examination made,
and to undertake individualized remedial measures on the basis of this
individual diagnosis. An LQ. as at present determined is at most -an
indication of certain risks and probabilities. Its practical value lies in the

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stimulus it gives to more intimate and intensive inquiry into individual-

ized abilities and disabilities.
As a matter of fact, President Cutten's educational outlook in the
concrete is much more intelligent and humane than is indicated by his
credulous use of the army tests. He saves himself by losing his logic. He
says that education is conservative as compared with theology and
philosophy; he declares that if we are teaching the wrong subjects, the
better the teaching the more disastrous the results; his conviction that
we are largely teaching the wrong subjects is perhaps indicated by his
statement that our curricula have not changed much in the last
millennium. He points out that the whole system is strong on its
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receptive side and weak on the creative side; and that the consequence
is the comparative scarcity of creative artists and thinkers among us.
Students who merely pass in college and who are conspicuous for
breaches of discipline become later in life leaders and executives.
Is it possible to admit these facts and not also admit that as a practical
measure we should devote ourselves to changes in education which are
within our control rather than worry about innate differences which
are not within our control? If there prevailed from the elementary
school up the kind of inquiring and creative education which President
Cutten desires for the college, perhaps democracy, in spite of native
inequalities and inferiorities, would not be in such a parlous condition.
Until we have tried the educational experiment, we simply do not know
and shall not know what individual capacities and limits really are. For
it is not just the quantity of our education which is confessedly at fault;
it is its quality, its spirit, method and aim.
A change from a receptive education to a creative one, to one which
as President Cutten well says would result in "ability to meet a unique
situation," obviously implies studying and treating individuals in their
distinctive and unique qualities. It involves getting away from that class
and averaged education to which the current interpretation of the
results of mental testing the more rigidly commits us . One appeals
with unusual pleasure from President Cutten dealing with a subject
matter of a science in which he is a somewhat credulous non-expert to
the field of education in which he is a wise expert. From an ad hominem
point of view, the difference of attitude in the two fields indicates how
much what is termed intelligence is an acquired matter, due to
opportunity and experience. No matter how much innate qualities may
set limits, they are not active forces . Experience, that is to say
education, is still the mother of wisdom. And we shall never have any
light upon what are the limits to intelligence set by innate qualities till

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we have immensely modified our scheme of getting and giving

experience, of education. Barring complete imbecility, it is safe to say
that the most limited member of the populace has potentialities which
do not now reveal themselves and which will not reveal themselves till
we convert education by and for mediocrity into an education by and
for individuality.
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